I saw this on the old news feed today and found the headline intriguing so I clicked.
A traffic ticket dispute in Oregon turns into a bigger fight over free-speech rights
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-...speech-rights/ar-BBGG4c6?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=iehp
What was interesting was what a lot of us feared.
[QOUTE]In 2013, Mats Jarlstrom's wife got a $260 ticket in the mail for running a red light.
It wasn't exactly the crime of the century. A camera caught her Volkswagen passing through a Beaverton, Ore., intersection [B}0.12 second[/B] after the light turned from yellow to red. [/QUOTE]
Take note of the time 12 100ths of a second, 0.12 secs.
So had the light been timed accurately, to the standard set, there would have been no ticket. Note too, that the judge decided that the evidence wasn't good enough.
This is what happens when you turn it over to a for profit organization. A lot of pressure to at least break even of the government, and make a profit for the company.
Read the rest of the story on the safety involved with the timing of the yellow light.
A traffic ticket dispute in Oregon turns into a bigger fight over free-speech rights
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-...speech-rights/ar-BBGG4c6?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=iehp
What was interesting was what a lot of us feared.
[QOUTE]In 2013, Mats Jarlstrom's wife got a $260 ticket in the mail for running a red light.
It wasn't exactly the crime of the century. A camera caught her Volkswagen passing through a Beaverton, Ore., intersection [B}0.12 second[/B] after the light turned from yellow to red. [/QUOTE]
Take note of the time 12 100ths of a second, 0.12 secs.
In Beaverton, the yellow lights were supposed to last exactly 3.5 seconds.
But using a stopwatch and two high-definition video cameras, Jarlstrom ran his own tests on the intersection where his wife was ticketed. He said his findings showed that the intersection's yellow lights ran on average 0.14 second, or 4 percent, shorter than advertised. He complained to the city.
"You might think this error is small but put into perspective a watch would add one full hour every day! (24 hours (ASTERISK) 4 percent equals 0.96 hours or 57.6 minutes)," Jarlstrom wrote in a memo to the City Council. "Not acceptable accuracy with today's technology - the ancient Greeks had better timing devices!"
City officials weren't convinced that anything was wrong - and neither was a judge, who looked at Jarlstrom's research before upholding his wife's ticket.
So had the light been timed accurately, to the standard set, there would have been no ticket. Note too, that the judge decided that the evidence wasn't good enough.
This is what happens when you turn it over to a for profit organization. A lot of pressure to at least break even of the government, and make a profit for the company.
Read the rest of the story on the safety involved with the timing of the yellow light.